Risk analysis on cascade breaching of the Tangjiashan landslide dam and two smaller downstream landslide dams

The 2008 Mw 7.9 Wenchuan earthquake triggered at least 257 landslide dams, most of which formed in series along rivers. The failure of an upstream dam could cause the failure of dams downstream one after another. The cascade dam breaching may result in sharp increase of flood and more serious damage downstream. This paper aims to analyze the...

Evaluation of Empirical Methods for Estimating Breaching Parameters of Dikes

Dike breaching parameters are important to support dike flood risk management, and can be estimated rapidly using empirical models. Due to the lack of dike specific models, sometimes models for man-made dams were used without validation. This paper compares relevant factors of dike, man-made dam and landslide dam breaches. With the aid of two...

Developments in levee reliability and flood risk analysis in the Netherlands

This paper presents and overview of advances in flood risk and levee reliability analysis in the Netherlands. It is described how new safety standards – in the form of a target failure probability – have been derived on the basis of nationwide flood risk assessments which taken into account both economic risk and risk to life. The process for...

Grasping the Heterogeneity of the Subsurface: using Buildup Scenarios for Assessing Flood-Protection Safety

The subsurface plays an important role when assessing flood risk and its build up has to be known in considerable detail to properly determine the chance of flood-protection failure. Currently, the subsurface below flood-protections is often characterized by geotechnical cross sections that are constructed using e.g. cone penetration tests (CPTs...

Application of Fragility Curves in Operational Flood Risk Assessment

The aim of this article is to present and discuss fragility curves that were derived for numerous dikes in the Netherlands within the Dike Data Service Centre (DDSC) initiative. A fragility curve of a dike is a mapping from the set of loads, acting on the dike, to the set of conditional dike failure probabilities. The DDSC is a platform around a...